The English writing system is often seen as having rules that govern the choice between alternative pronunciations of letters but as having many exceptions to the rules. One postulated rule, the V¯|CV rule, is that a vowel is pronounced as long rather than short when it is followed by a single consonant letter plus a vowel letter. We find, in an…

In this article, we provide a cross-linguistic perspective on the universals and particulars in learning to read across seventeen different orthographies. Starting from the assumption that reading reflects a learned sensitivity to the systematic relationships between the surface forms of words and their meanings, we chose a broad group of…

Learning to read and spell involves learning about the written forms of words and how these are linked to language. Writing systems include formal patterns, which pertain to the appearance of written words, and functional patterns, which pertain to links between units of writing and units of language. We review the evidence that learners of a…

This study examined how top-down control influenced letter-speech sound (L-SS) learning, the initial phase of learning to read. In 2020, 107 Dutch children (53 boys, M[subscript age] = 106.845 months) learned eight L-SS correspondences, either preceded by goal-directed or implicit instructions. Symbol knowledge and artificial word-reading ability…

While children are able to name letters fairly quickly, the automatisation of letter-speech sound mappings continues over the first years of reading development. In the current longitudinal fMRI study, we explored developmental changes in cortical responses to letters and speech sounds across 3 yearly measurements in a sample of 18 8-11 year old…

Application of psycholinguistic insights initiated a long career researching how children learn to read words. A theory was proposed claiming that spellings of individual words are stored in memory when their graphemes become bonded to phonemes in their pronunciations along with meanings, and this enables readers to read stored words automatically…

Purpose: Readers can draw on their knowledge of sound-to-letter mappings to form expectations about the spellings of known spoken words prior to seeing them in written sentences. The current study asked whether such orthographic expectancies are observed in the absence of contextual support at the point of reading. Method: Seventy-eight adults…

Central questions in the study of visual word recognition and developmental dyslexia are whether early lexical activation precedes and supports decoding (a dual-stage view) or not (dual-route view), and the locus of deficits in dysfluent reading. The dual-route view predicts early word frequency and length interaction, whereas the dual-stage view…

The aim of this study was to understand the relationship between children's knowledge of letter-sound rules ("grapheme-phoneme knowledge") and their ability to identify separate graphemes (e.g., SH, OI) that comprise words ("grapheme parsing"). We used a single-case study approach with children with phonological dyslexia who…

A hallmark of skilled reading is recognizing written words automatically from memory by sight. How beginning readers attain this skill is explained. They must acquire foundational knowledge, including phonemic segmentation, grapheme-phoneme knowledge, decoding, and spelling skills. When these skills are applied, spellings of words become bonded to…

Learning the relationships between letters and sounds is a key component of early literacy development and a central aim during the first year of school. Introducing one new letter a week is the most common approach in many countries, but little is known about how the pace of letter instruction contributes to the development of early literacy…

In the "Sound Pattern of English," Chomsky and Halle (1968) posited that English orthography, despite the complexity in how it relates to phonology, is in fact more "optimal" in at least one aspect: how it relates to morphology. A root or stem tends to maintain a constant visual form across words built upon it even as its…

This paper presents an overview of evidence from psychological research, which enables us to understand the processes involved in word reading, how children develop word reading skills and how to teach them to read words successfully. Psychological models of reading in alphabetic orthographies propose two routes to word reading: an indirect route…

In early Finnish reading instruction, hyphens are used to denote syllable boundaries. However, this practice slows down reading already during the 1st grade. It has been hypothesized that hyphenation forces readers to rely more on phonology than orthography. Since hyphenation highlights the phonology of the word, it may facilitate reading during…

Previous meta-analyses highlight the role of executive functions (EF), encompassing working memory, task-switching, and inhibition, in reading comprehension, but have not demarcated its role in decoding, defined as use of orthographic patterns to access oral pronunciations. According to the dual-route model, decoding involves parallel activation…